by P P Corcoran
“Ah, here we are.” Said Semple as he stopped and made a show of checking his wristwatch. “How about we say half an hour and I’ll meet you back here?”
Resentment stirred in Phillipa’s gut at the way Semple set all the goal posts. She was the officer here and perhaps it was time she reminded the Staff Sergeant of that fact.
“No, I don’t think so. Have the team muster here in an hour. I’ve not been for my daily run yet and I could do with stretching my muscles. I’m sure you and the team wouldn’t mind joining me?” If Phillipa thought her decision would wipe the smile off Semple’s face she had miscalculated.
“Outstanding idea, Boss. An hour it is.” And with that Semple walked off, a tuneless whistle emanating from his pursed lips.
Phillipa watched his retreating back for a few moments before grabbing her bags and heading for the door leading into Officers’ Quarters.
An hour to get booked in. Find a room. Get something to eat and then dig out my PT kit. Damn, I might have cut this a bit fine but Semple needs put back in his box before he thinks he can run roughshod over me, thought Phillipa picking up her pace.
Semple continued strolling nonchalantly, until he rounded a drab gray building taking him out of his new officers’ line of sight and he broke into a brisk jog.
Team Nine’s bunk room was on the far side of the base, almost a kilometer and a half from his present location. By the time he got there, rounded up the team, made his way to his own quarters, got changed, and got back here ready for Boss’ PT session he would be cutting it close.
Still, he had to smile to himself. Semple had been around the block. In fact, he had been a member of Thunder since its inception and was well aware how unusual it was for a mere lieutenant, let alone one straight out of officer training, to make it into this unit. Most officers never got the experience or combat skills needed to join Thunder until they had reached the rank of captain. The ribbons on Papadomas’ chest went part way to explaining her presence within this elite unit. Semple knew her Marine Commandant’s Commendation was not awarded lightly - he had two and both had earned him a stay in hospital.
She may have been a low-down grunt like him in the past but now she was an officer, and his new boss had passed a simple but important test in Semple’s eyes. Did she have the bottle to remind someone who once outranked her but was now her junior that she was his boss? Semple felt another chuckle growing in his throat.
A PT session.
A great way to assess your team and, also, straight out of the Officer’s Training Manual. Still, Papadomas had made the call.
That would do for a start. This is going to be interesting, thought Semple as he checked his watch again and increased his pace to give him another couple of minutes to get changed.
CHAPTER TEN
THE SEARCH CONTINUES
TDF TYCHO BRAHE | GATEWAY STATION | EDGE OF THE ASTEROID BELT | SOL SYSTEM
Terrance Wilson stepped into the corridor outside the bunk on the scientific research vessel TDF Tycho Brahe that was going to be his home for the foreseeable future. The ever enthusiastic Ensign Burkett was waiting to greet him and immediately began a meandering conversation about how he had spent the past two months either elbow deep in state of the art circuitry or perched in front of a computer terminal going over and over simulations to ensure that the problems which had plagued the first unsuccessful outing of the Deployable Stellar Detection Grid.
The brain child of Doctor Sylvia Sarkisian and designed to detect the earliest fluctuations in stars as far back as the Big Bang itself the project had been effectively hijacked by the navy’s Department of Special Projects for the DSDG could very well be the key to locating the home of the Creator, the being responsible for sending the Others on their failed Ehita or religious mission to scour the stars clean of anything the Creator had deemed impure which, basically, meant every life form that was not one of their own. And carry out that mission they had. Untold billions had perished as the Others scoured planet after planet, system after system, clean of all intelligent life. Only by the thinnest of threads had humanity survived, and even then, that survival had come at great cost. It was only after the Others had been defeated that the truth behind the Creator myth came out.
The Others believed that at some time in their past the Creator had taken them from their home world and transported them to Assena where he had selected them among all other life in the galaxy to be his Chosen People and his instrument of destruction. Once the Ehita was complete the Creator had promised to once again reunite with his devout followers and take them to the promised world of Assena where the Chosen People would live forever in harmony with the Creator under the red star that bathed Assena in its warm glow. The Creator then transported them once more to the planet which they named Durav which would be their home until the Ehita was complete. However, the myth that the Others had once visited Assena persisted and it was that myth that had got a young Lieutenant Terrance Wilson who at the time was ensconced in an office at naval intelligence headquarters in Carson City to thinking.
The key to locating this Creator was the red star. Terrance had a rough date as to when the Others in their myth must have visited Assena because the planet where they had originated had been discovered. The fourth planet circling the star that humans called 9 Ceti some 66.5 light-years from Earth. The inhabitants of that planet had been wiped out by an artificially constructed biological plague specifically designed to kill anything that contained the merest trace of Saiph DNA. What had struck the medical team at the time though was that the degree of medical and technical skill to manufacture such a weapon was well beyond that attained by the natural inhabitants. A fact which pointed to outside interference. Again, this matched up with the Creator myth. Blood tests taken from captured Others showed that they were immune to the biological weapon. Another piece of the puzzle fell into place for had the Creator not specifically selected the Chosen People. Taking the destruction of the Others original home world as a basis for his time line, around A.D. 1000 by Earth standard, Terrance had proposed that if the Creator myth was to be believed then the Creator had, in the presence of the Others, made a red star disappear. All they had to do was locate a red star which without explanation suddenly disappeared in or around A.D. 1000. To Terrance that had appeared a simple thing to do, take a gravity drive equipped ship, fold out to a base line of 500 light-years from Durav, deploy the DSDG and hunt for red stars. Once you have located the requisite class of stars pack everything away and fold out fifty light-years. Repeat the same search parameters until one star disappears. Viola, the star that disappears is Assena. Simple.
Only it had proved not to be so simple. Repeated malfunctions of the DSDG had extended a planned fourteen-week mission into six months with nothing to show but a load of broken, expensive equipment at the end of it.
If Terrance was truthful, he was mentally and physically exhausted by the time Tycho Brahe returned to Gateway Station and the opportunity to see his wife Maggie and his bouncing baby son Richard, named after Maggie’s father.
“So, how was the holiday on Janus, sir?” Asked Burkett.
It was the first thing that had actually managed to penetrate Terrance’s thoughts as he dragged himself back to the present, surprised to find himself and Burkett standing outside the XO’s quarters.
“Good. Good, thank you for asking.” He replied hurriedly.
Burkett appeared totally oblivious to the fact that Terrance had no idea what he had said in the preceding five minutes during the walk from Terrance’s quarters on Deck Four to the XO’s quarters on Deck Two.
“I’ll leave you here then sir. Meet up in Deployment Control afterward?” Burkett said cheerfully.
“Eh… yeah sure. Deployment Control.”
Burkett head off while Terrance took a minute to shake himself mentally before tapping the entry request key on the pad beside the door. With the soft whoosh of hydraulics, the door slipped to one side to reveal the seated form of Lie
utenant Commander Darel Apter waving for Terrance to take a seat.
“Good to see you back in one-piece Terrance. What say we get this show on the road?”
Any thoughts of Maggie and Joshua disappeared as Terrance and Apter began going over the new specs of the improved DSDG both determined this time to locate their furtive quarry.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ASHES TO ASHES
AN EMPIRE IN FLAMES
EMPEROR YALO IV SPACEPORT | ALONA SYSTEM | 50,000 LIGHT-YEARS FROM EARTH
Whoever said that the early hours of the morning were the worst time to be on duty had been the wisest Alonan to have ever lived, thought Colonel Salak, Duty Watch Officer aboard Emperor Yalo IV Spaceport. The spaceport hung at the fringes of the Alonan systems’ defense grid and was the only authorized gateway into the home system of the Alonan Empire. Beyond the spaceport’s thick armor and heavy directed energy weapons, lay vast clouds of floating minefields, the pathways between them changed on a regular basis so no enemy could predict a clear route to the spaceport.
Further in-system lay the numerous buoys containing the oversized gravity drive nulling fields which would wreck any vessel’s attempt to circumvent the spaceport and approach Alona or its populated neighbor Geta.
“Excuse me, sir.” The voice of the young lieutenant overseeing the radar section sounded in his earphone. A voice that was full of apology for disturbing anyone who held the lofty rank of colonel.
Slowly Salak raised his arms above his head and stretched trying though failing miserably to shake the tiredness from them. “Go ahead, Lieutenant.” Salak said as he reached across for his container of steaming kepta tea.
When the younger officer hesitated Salak turned to face the sensor section located less than a dozen meters from Salak’s own seat. “Spit it out, Lieutenant.” Salak commanded with disdain.
“Could you come over and look at this, sir. I think we have a better fix on those sensor ghosts that the late shift warned us about. And...”
Salak let out an irritated sigh and forced himself to count to five before speaking. “And what, Lieutenant?”
The lieutenant got the distinct feeling he was about to be the target of the colonel’s wrath, however, he stuck to his guns, steadied his breathing and tried to speak with confidence that his mildly trembling legs belied. “Sir, I’m tracking multiple inbounds that appear to be attempting to hide their course with a very subtle ECM.”
May the emperors passed save us from inexperienced officers that see a threat in every passing meteor cloud thought Salak as he unplugged his headset and casually wandered over to the sensor section. The junior officer subserviently moved aside as the colonel approached. To ensure the Lieutenant understood his superior’s annoyance at having to walk a whole fifteen steps Salak made sure to give him a hard stare before switching his attention to the display and the trace which was in all likelihood a few hundred tonnes of rock tumbling through space at the edges of the sensor system’s detection range before once more disappearing into the depths of space.
What Salak saw caused his Kepta to halt halfway to his lips. After a moment he pushed the steaming container into the lieutenant’s hands while he moved the rating seated directly in front of the display out of the way so he could get an unobstructed view of the screen.
“Emperors protect us!” Salak whispered as he ran back to his console and brought his hand down on the battle station’s alarm praying, he was not too late, but in his heart, he knew the truth.
At the equivalent to knife fighting range in space warfare, just three hundred kilometers, the tiny electronic brains of a dozen missiles judged they were within range of their designated targets; electrical pulses cascaded through a series of cables and the complex magnetic fields clutching the warheads collapsed.
Each missile contained just 250 grams of antimatter; enough to annihilate its equivalent weight in matter and release an explosion of ten megatonnes.
In less than a second, the shockwave evaporated the outer armored skin of the spaceport like a butterfly’s wings under a high-powered laser.
Onward the shockwave rushed, crushing, pulverizing and super-heating anything it touched.
In less time than it took to blink, Emperor Yalo IV Spaceport and the thousands of Imperial Navy personnel who called it home ceased to exist.
Barely slowed by the bulk of the spaceport, the shockwave plunged in-system, into the mass of the floating mine fields and defensive weapon’s platforms, that had already proven ineffective, and rendered all things within a million kilometers utterly useless due to physical damage or from the massive electromagnetic pulse.
The shockwave began to dissipate and revealed asteroids, in existence from the beginning of the Alonan solar system, pulverized to dust.
If any Alonan sensor system had survived the attack it would have noted a series of brief, eerie green flashes beyond the reach of eyes. As the shockwave passed beyond these ghosts, they flickered out of existence and the space around what had once been the gateway to the Alonan system returned to peace.
✽✽✽
COMMAND DECK | LEAD CRUISER | FIRST WING | SAIPH FLEET
The floor beneath the Supreme Leader’s feet vibrated and a satisfied smile spread across his features. The cruiser’s engines had switched to full power, taking up the extra load to supplement the energy fields protecting the ship from the fury of the shockwave. The vibration subsided as the shockwave of the weapons he had unleashed against the Alonans passed and raced onward.
“All ships report ready to proceed, Supreme Leader.” Reported Star Leader Foral from his seat at the center of the Command Deck. Foral had insisted that the Supreme leader sit in the center seat, however, the Supreme leader was adamant that Foral retain his place of command during the assault on the half-breed’s system.
“The fleet is yours, Star Leader Foral. Let us be about our business.”
Foral bowed his head in acknowledgment; the Saiph Command Deck personnel had just witnessed the Supreme leader pass the honor of leading the attack against the half-breeds, and bestow that honor on the man who had trained the fleet that now hung like angry beasts, ready to be released and fall upon their prey.
“Communications, signal Second Wing and Third Wing that we are proceeding as planned. The null gravity generators in this sector are destroyed and we will engage our gravity drive to place us closer to the target. We will repeat the process of destroying the generators and enemy vessels by employing antimatter warheads. Inform them I expect this to take no longer than one hour from now. Second Fleet is to assume position at system north to interdict any fleeing enemy vessels or communications drones. Third Wing is to assume reciprocal positions at system south with the same task.”
Foral tried not to grip the arms of his seat too tightly as Communications relayed his orders to Second Wing commanded by Wing Leader Nokal and Third Wing commanded by Caretaker Geoll.
Foral had had his doubts about entrusting an entire wing to Geoll, however, the Supreme leader had pointed out that the people needed to see that the Originals, as those who had entered suspended animation with the Supreme Leader had become known, had the utmost faith in their progeny and first among that progeny was the Geoll. By allowing him to command a crucial element of the attack on Alona, it showed the masses awaiting his orders back on the Dyson Sphere that he considered them equals. As much a pure blood Saiph as those who forced from their home world so long ago.
“Orders acknowledged, sir.” Came the call from Communications.
The Supreme Leader rested a hand lightly on the shoulder of his oldest friend. “Our destiny awaits, my friend.”
“Then let us not keep it waiting, shall we.” Foral replied in a voice low enough that only the Supreme Leader heard. “Helm, take us in.” Foral said loud enough for the entire Command Deck to hear.
Three hundred Saiph cruisers, the color of the darkest night, blinked out of existence.
The Empire was oblivious to the fact they wer
e already under attack.
✽✽✽
THE IMPERIAL PALACE | ALONA
“Madam Ambassador,” began Minister Hozal in that whining tone that grated on Court of Emperor Paxt, the Ninth of the Alonan Empire and she did her damnedest to keep her face neutral, “the Empire must protest at the overtly aggressive wording used by your joint governments in this communique.”
“I believe the language used expresses our concerns of a violation of this magnitude.” Unnati replied in her firmest, no nonsense tone.
Too aggressive my behind, she thought, you crushed a man’s leg in a door so badly it had to be amputated! Unnati knew a prosthetic limb would give the man his full mobility back, but she appreciated the difficulties he and his family faced with months of rehab. So, screw you and your niceties!
“There was no violation.” Came a strong voice, unused to being questioned.
Unnati moved her gaze away from the Alonan Foreign Minister and steadied it on Grand Admiral Raga, Commander of the Imperial Navy, and the man whose ship the observer had been attempting to board.
Tag teaming me, eh? Obviously, you’ve not read my file- University’s female wrestling champion three years running!
“How is an assault on a serving officer of the Terran Defense Forces not a violation of the Joint Observer Treaty, as signed by the respective heads of my governments and -” Unnati allowed her eyes to linger momentarily on the personage sat upon the raised dais, before which she stood, then returned them to Grand Admiral Raga, “the emperor himself?” Her last comment elicited the expected response
“How dare you cast aspersions upon the honor of the emperor.” Raged Hozal. “This is a matter of imperial security...” The minister’s voice trailed off as he realized what he had just said, his face reddening even more as he caught the flicker of a smile play across Unnati’s lips.